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Tied by Heartstrings to Calamity

Cleaning up the contents of a house in Long beach, N.Y., last weekend after Hurricane Sandy.Credit
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

USUALLY, Liz Cohen’s mother on Staten Island is the one making urgent, middle-of-the-night phone calls to check on her daughter’s safety in Israel. But when Hurricane Sandy swamped Ms. Cohen’s former neighborhood last month, she frantically dialed her mother, Janet MeresmanCohen, in New York.

“It is a weird feeling,” she said. “The roles have reversed.”

Ms. MeresmanCohen was fortunate; the hurricane spared her house. She never even lost electric power. Yet the flood of photos documenting the destruction — yachts strewed on city streets, crumpled cars and homes smashed into muddy piles of rubble — unnerved her daughter in Tzur Hadassah, Israel.

“Once it became obvious that Staten Island got so slammed, it really hit me,” said Ms. Cohen, 30, who wrote about her anguish on her blog about life as an expatriate. “For the past week, my heels have been in Israel, but my heart is in Staten Island.”

When Americans living abroad watch a disaster unfold from afar, many struggle with a severe case of homesickness and a profound sense of helplessness. For some, contributing to relief efforts can ease storm-related anxiety.

According to Scott G. Knowles, author of “The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America,” expatriates are likely to rise to action when a crisis erupts in the United States because of “community cohesion.” The well-documented theory, also affirmed in the Sept. 11 attacks, holds that after disasters “neighbors come together to help, as opposed to the opposite view, often articulated, that people will fly to pieces and turn all their attention to looting until the authorities arrive.”

Writing by e-mail, Mr. Knowles, a history professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said “a sizable chunk” of the nation’s population “lives, has lived or has family in the Northeast, so if there was going to be a truly ‘national disaster’ this would be it.” Hurricane Katrina, which primarily struck New Orleans, “was treated as a sort of exotic place. We had a Congressional leader suggesting not to rebuild it — nothing like that has been suggested after Sandy.”

Charles R. Figley, a psychologist at Tulane University in New Orleans and editor of “The Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide,” suggests that calamities spur some Americans to help from abroad because they are “vicariously traumatized.” In Mr. Figley’s analysis, others might donate a few dollars to charity to absolve themselves from taking further action, reasoning, “ ‘Oh, I feel so bad for them. I did something. O.K., good.’ ”

Ms. Cohen did not engage in much self-analysis before enlisting in the relief efforts. She donated money to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and the Jewish Federation of North America Hurricane Relief Fund, traded information about the devastation with “East Coast friends” in Israel and published a list of nonprofits distributing disaster aid on her blog. “If I was there I would be totally driving around with what little gas I had,” she said. “I really did want to get on a plane and pitch in.”

That’s exactly what Stuart Katz did. Mr. Katz, who moved to Israel from Long Island nearly three years ago, returned to New York after consulting with local rabbis to find out how he could help. Since arriving on Nov. 3, he volunteered at a shelter in Far Rockaway, relieved people waiting in long gasoline lines and drove voters to the polls on Election Day.

Photo

Providing soup to the Gravesend Houses in Coney Island.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

“When we were in the States we were always helping Israel when they were in dire need,” said Mr. Katz. “We kind of know how to help.”

Supporting his former neighbors brightened Mr. Katz’s mood. He said his rabbi in New York, Yehuda Septimus of Young Israel of North Woodmere, surmised that Mr. Katz was stressed as the relief effort began without him. “The truth is I never thought about that,” he added, but he acknowledged that he was.

From her home in Vancouver, British Columbia, Rochelle Grayson, who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, felt “a fair bit of guilt” while monitoring the crisis online and through social media. “My life has not changed. I have electricity,” said Ms. Grayson, who teaches social media at the University of British Columbia.

She wrote a $200 check to the Red Cross, but that did not satisfy her urge to do more. “I sent in some money, but I don’t even know how my money is being used there,” she said. In the meantime, she searched for a grass-roots effort to support. She heard from a college friend, Danielle Moss Lee, the head of the Young Women’s Christian Association of the City of New York, that the organization planned a weeklong drive to collect blankets, work gloves and other supplies for families in Coney Island in Brooklyn.

Ms. Grayson publicized the event through her extensive Facebook network. “I feel in that way, I can help more people, more concretely,” she said.

Social networks, vital links to home for those far from it, naturally become even more emotionally charged during responses to disasters. Stephanie O. Kleindorfer, an American psychologist who lives in Paris, said a sudden loss of communication with support networks could compound stress and trauma that many experienced when a crisis strikes. “Being completely detached from a significant social network that is assumed to be completely reliable can certainly foster feelings of isolation, helplessness and powerlessness and for some, anger,” wrote Ms. Kleindorfer in an e- mail.

Another storm effect, forecasts Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School who has studied expatriates’ behavior, will be a surge in those identifying themselves foremost as Americans. Expatriates identify with their home culture on a continuum, said Mr. Galinsky. Some wholeheartedly identify with their adopted homeland; others completely resist assimilation, he said. “For almost anyone who even has a minimal level of identification with their home culture, a disaster will tend to extenuate, highlight and intensify that identification with their home country,” said Mr. Galinsky.

Though Rozanne Lofaso VanRie moved to Antwerp, Belgium, in 2006 and previously lived near the District of Columbia, she still describes herself as a Brooklyn girl. Most of her family lives in New York, and they suffered during the storm. Her uncle was “under water in Staten Island on Sanilac Street,” and her son and daughter-in-law were evacuated from their Brooklyn apartment and didn’t return for three days.

Though the hurricane heightened her longing to comfort her family in person, the storm simultaneously deepened her bonds with current neighbors. Ms. Lofaso VanRie belongs to the American Woman’s Club of Antwerp, and many Belgian members asked how they could help Americans.

“It really is a warm feeling knowing that we are not in this alone,” said Ms. Lofaso VanRie, whose club organized a bake sale to aid victims of the hurricane. The fund-raising goal of the event is modest: perhaps a few hundred euros. “We all want to do something,” she said. “When you do nothing then it’s frustrating, and if everybody does a little bit, that’s a whole lot of something.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 9, 2012, on Page F1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tied by Heartstrings to Calamity. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe